a pumpkin robot (another letter i’ll never send)

not the shiny high tech kind that a brainy person could build from scratch and program with enough happiness and frivolity to make billions of people happy. or the sexy, intriguing kind that writers like to ponder in their poetry. but a listless, lifeless, often redundant robot with limbs so heavy that sometimes it hurts to walk — if i’m lucky. but i am not lucky or shiny or sexy. i am merely a pumpkin robot. my insides stream out and color the ground a gentle orange; i am so empty that i wonder if i am dead.

i eatsleepwork but all from behind a trusty window. the days are so similar that i forget if it is monday or thursday. have you left me yet or am i still convincing myself that one day you won’t be angry and lash me with it? i could have loved you something wonderful.

i like to press my face against the glass and feel coldness push itself into my cheeks. if i wait long enough maybe my brown cheeks will turn a lush, soft pink like a baby. maybe i could start all over. it’s not like i have anything left.

i write the words save me into the foggy glass. i used to try to save everyone. i dreamed all the world needed was love to heal. people don’t want love though. they want food. they want their amputated leg to stop hurting. they want to erase the images of gun shots and bombs that stripped their family, country apart. what can you and your stupid love do for me, they shout. i whimper and flatten myself against the ground — my pumpkin iron arms the only thing holding me together.

sometimes, i think there’s another pumpkin robot out there (maybe even you). i talk to him or her rather than to god — my soul is damned anyway. i know you’re out there, i whisper to her. the words you have to be float into the thick quiet. roam the world with me. i know a perfect spot for dreaming where it never grows cold, the air smells like vanilla and honey, and you don’t have to wear shoes. the grass tickles your feet and you’re happy. you’re happy and it’s not a war to stay that way — it’s intermingled in each breath in and each laugh out.

come with me. we can paint our dreams in bright yellow and purple hues and string them together with band aids and the little bit of love we can muster from our rusty parts. we can fly away on them and never look back.

I find this piece strangely enlightening, happy in a way even if it’s not suppose to be, I’ve always like how beautifully you put your thoughts together, like a dream that somehow seeps with undoubted yearnings for the one comfort, I trend to see things in a good perspective on good days and on bad days, nothing good settles inside, everything bad just pops out, like a madness controlled only by the bits of string that ties my sanity together, I suppose everyone’s like that

That is perfectly done but I’m not sure the uplift at the end matched the honesty of the beginning. Maybe that’s my ear which is irrelevant or maybe you should write more which isn’t. I understand the time limitations, believe me but it’s a tragedy that a voice as wonderful as yours, as unique, real and moving should be quieted by the difficulties of earning a living.

there is a definite turn and perhaps there’s not enough of a bridge between the two sections. (however, i certainly don’t question the “honesty” of either section.) it’s a first draft so when I flesh it out more, this might change.

though I do love to complain about work, I can’t say that my job is connected to the breaks I take from blogging. i touch upon this a little bit in my updated about me…

Honest, funny and wonderfully written. I’ve felt the
same way, and still do sometimes, almost like the
emily d. poem, I’m a nobody, are you a nobody too.
For sure there’s another, but often we pumpkins are
too shy or afraid to make the first move, to know
the twin that awaits.
The most lyrical part of your poem reminds me simply
of childhood. I can remember that same feeling as
at a very young age, 4,5,6, running barefoot our the
shaggy lawns with my best next door friend Linda.

Favorite Posts

"If we take judging ourselves and others out of our life, we will mostly be living in paradise." -- Yogi Bhajan

To heal is to touch with love that which we previously touched with fear. --Stephen Levine

come away with me. we can paint our dreams in bright yellow and purple hues and string them together with band aids and the little bits of love we can muster from our rusty parts. we can fly away on them and never look back. -- lissa

Each day, each moment, we get to choose whether we respond with happiness or misery, love or fear. -- lissa

"Through practice, I've come to see that the deepest source of my misery is not wanting things to be the way they are. Not wanting my self to be the way I am. Not wanting the world to be the way it is. Not wanting others to be the way they are. Whenever I'm suffering, I find this war with reality to be at the heart of my problem." -- Stephen Cope.

I feel like something broke inside of me and all of this light is shining through --my darkness became my light. -- lissa